Council meeting minutes from 2025-11-13

minutes of the students' representative council for study programs of computer science

Regular rotation in base lectures

---- INTRO ------

Due to recent events there is some interest to propose a rotation system for (most) base lectures.
To further this goal we would like to have a medium term goal that every base lecture is held by at least 2 different professors.

---- DISCUSSION ------

If this proposal does have consensus among the students we would contact the deans.

Many courses have a redundancy of 1 which is problematic in the case of a lecturer not being able to hold a lecture in one iteration.


Some base lectures which are currently rotated:
- Programmierung 1
- Programmierung 2

We would like this to be extended to:
- System Architecture
- Grundzüge von Algorithmen und Datenstrukturen
- Software Praktikum

Debatable additions:
- Big Data Engineering
- Nebenläufige Programmierung
- Elements of Machine Learning

Currently having a rotation again this semester:
- Grundlagen der Theoretischen Informatik


One point given was that rotation is not always an improvement if the new prof is not as good in teaching as the prof before. Counter to this is that rotations can lead to other profs learning how to teach better.

Holding a lecture is also not only a lot of work for the proffessor but also PhD students who often support the course as assistants. Rotations do help with balancing workload.

On this note, if there are issues with a certain lecturer, rotation is not the problem and the issues should be addressed specifically. With rotation, students could potentially choose lecturers they have a stronger interest in (regarding thesis for example).

Rotation of lectures can lead to different difficulties depending on the lecturer holding the current iteration. The Deans are aware of this and it is favored to have a shared or similar script between the lecturers, but this is again up to the lecturers themself.

There is a hiring committee going on at the moment for AlgoDat and TI, but it is currently now sure if the new professors will add to the pool or replace current professors.

Hiring committees should focus more strongly on the teaching of a candidate if the redundancy will be 1 for the position.

It was brought up that Christian Hoffman could be considered for System Architecture (CH is holding Informationstechnische Grundlagen für Physiker 3, which has a huge overlap with the topics of SA)

---- CONCLUSION ------

We will hold a voting if we favor rotation for base lectures during mailing list or do a vote in the next meeting since not enough elected members were present for quorate.

SaarAlumni: there is a website

---- INFO ------

University recently rolled out a new portal for alumnis of UdS.
https://www.alumni-uni-saarland.de/

Groups can be created there
https://www.alumni-uni-saarland.de/gruppen/FAQ/

We could do a group for former council members

Or a group for students of SIC

Rental contracts

---- INTRO ------

We currently had an issues that equipment was rented out for some time so the student could study. The problem there was that the renting period is currently now 3 months and the student wanted to extend to 8 months, which was denied.

This sparked this discussing, if we want to introduce a max rent length and how to handle late returns.

---- DISCUSSION ------

It would not hurt be more strict (with exceptions on hard cases) about returning items.

Renting out needed equipment in shorter time spans is normally the goal, since the general utility for all students is higher this way. The renting should help with a short time problem and not be a long time 'sponsorship'.

We could send out automated reminder emails and at some point some more firm ones, since we use rental contracts, there is a legal angle.

Reaching people by email is also hard if some time is in between renting out.

The amount of rental deposit should not be increased / should not be to high to be a filter for students without the needed money for the deposit.

Regarding the extensions a safety mechanism could be to only allow extension in person after bringing the equipment. To persuade into not renting out things for months some daily cost could be introduced after x extensions, to make it financially unwise to perma lend.

Regarding late returns, we could use the standard system of a fee.
For example, only giving half of deposit back if the return deadline is not met would give a strong insensitive to return on time.

---- CONCLUSION ------

Our rental task force will propose some formal text / idea for the next meeting which the council then will vote on

Karaoke

---- INFO ------

During some recent external event it was brought to us, that holding a small karaoke activity integrated into the GameNights would be great.

The GameNight task force agreed to try this out, so there will be some karaoke at the next event.

Regarding the songs and the setup we still got to figure a bit out, more info later.